Tuesday, 12 June, 2018

LINK: “The wellsprings of UK digital reform part 2 – separating porcine lip enhancement from transformation”

Transformation is a world away from simply polishing the way things are currently done (the “lipstick on pigs” approach – the tired web- and form-based service design ethos of the past few decades, stuck Groundhog Day-like inside the broken silos and reference frames of existing organisational services). Improving our public services relies on the ability to step back and rethink and redesign current public policy by focusing relentlessly and selflessly on improved outcomes, with a profoundly beneficial and positive impact on people and their experience of delivering or receiving public services.

Original: https://ntouk.wordpress.com/2018/06/09/the-wellsprings-of-uk-digital-reform-part-2-separating-porcine-lip-enhancement-from-transformation/

#LINK: “The wellsprings of UK digital reform part 2 – separating porcine lip enhancement from transformation”

Monday, 11 June, 2018

Monday, 4 June, 2018

LINK: “OpenStack in transition”

OpenStack is one of the most important and complex open-source projects you’ve never heard of. It’s a set of tools that allows large enterprises ranging from Comcast and PayPal to stock exchanges and telecom providers to run their own AWS-like cloud services inside their data centers.

Original: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/24/openstack-in-transition/

#LINK: “OpenStack in transition”

LINK: “What have we learned from the Service Design Conference (SD in Gov)”

I’ve not heard anyone disagree that this is a good thing. There were many people at the event who were passionate about user centred services and about designing end to end services. Why is user research not given the priority it needs and why do we still continue to pay little attention to it when undertaking transformation activity and service redesign?

Original: https://medium.com/north-east-lincolnshire-digital/what-have-we-learned-from-the-service-design-conference-sd-in-gov-64e4438a2223

#LINK: “What have we learned from the Service Design Conference (SD in Gov)”

LINK: “Delivery-driven Government”

The movement to modernize government technology has been focused on the delivery of government services using modern technology and best practices. But that is only half the solution; now we must also learn to drive policy and operations around delivery and users, and complete the feedback circuit. Only then can we effectively achieve the goals government policies intend.

Original: https://medium.com/code-for-america/delivery-driven-government-67e698c57c7b?source=userActivityShare-2e5276a56569-1527862195

#LINK: “Delivery-driven Government”

Thursday, 31 May, 2018

LINK: “Growing communities beyond the edges of the organisation”

In digitally mature organisations we are used to seeing strong communities of engaged, self-selecting members gathered around a shared purpose beyond that of their day to day jobs. Organisational communities thrive because they add an extra dimension to the organisational structure, and can increase the number of connections each individual has across the organisation’s network.

Original: https://postshift.com/growing-communities-beyond-the-edges-of-the-organisation/

#LINK: “Growing communities beyond the edges of the organisation”

Tuesday, 29 May, 2018

LINK: “The Ad Hoc Government Digital Services Playbook”

The Ad Hoc Government Digital Services Playbook compiles what we’ve learned from four years of delivering digital services for government clients. Our playbook builds on and extends the Digital Services Playbook by the United States Digital Service. The USDS playbook is a valuable set of principles, questions, and checklists for government to consider when building digital services. If followed, the plays make it more likely a digital services project will succeed.

Original: https://adhocteam.us/2018/05/24/the-ad-hoc-government-digital-services-playbook/

#LINK: “The Ad Hoc Government Digital Services Playbook”

Saturday, 26 May, 2018

LINK: “Throw away your corporate training plan”

Transforming an organisation is fundamentally about working with people to help them do new things and work in new ways. There’s a whole industry built on workplace training with courses, curricula and training providers to fit almost any skills gap. But when it comes to digital transformation, this way of thinking falls short in several ways.

Original: https://blog.wearefuturegov.com/throw-away-your-corporate-training-plan-e8eae41ae6c8

#LINK: “Throw away your corporate training plan”

Friday, 25 May, 2018

LINK: “To take the next step on digital, we dropped the word ‘digital’”

Although digital technologies are a powerful way to change a service, what really matters is the method with which change is done: user research, UX design, agile working, co-design, and solving problems in experimental ways. We now want to apply those methods to a wider set of problems, not all involving digital tech.

Original: https://wearecitizensadvice.org.uk/to-take-the-next-step-on-digital-we-dropped-the-word-digital-14b09ec2f25f

#LINK: “To take the next step on digital, we dropped the word ‘digital’”

Thursday, 24 May, 2018

LINK: “The Hitchhikers guide to Engaging SMEs and Local Government in Innovation”

Due to time constraints, many Local Government Service leads are inevitably ‘heads down’ and perhaps overwhelmed by the variety of technology on offer. It can be hard to team up with neighbouring boroughs because that adds complexity and may slow things down through collaborative decision making. They need more ‘heads up’ time to reflect and review what is going on elsewhere, and try to be open minded and consider wider options – we as SMEs on the other hand need to present our products in terms of their benefits, in plain English, not as a technology offer.

Original: https://medium.com/@hilary.simpson/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-engaging-smes-and-local-government-in-innovation-d9b6d371feff

#LINK: “The Hitchhikers guide to Engaging SMEs and Local Government in Innovation”

Wednesday, 23 May, 2018

LINK: “Ignore the hype over big tech. Its products are mostly useless”

The endless noise emanating from Silicon Valley essentially has two complementary elements. One is all about dreams so unlikely that they beggar belief: the idea that the Tesla CEO Elon Musk will one day set up a colony on Mars; or that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg can successfully marshal an attempt to “cure, prevent and manage” all diseases in a single generation. Whatever its basis in fact, this stuff casts people and corporations as godlike visionaries, and then provides a puffed-up context for the stuff the big tech companies shout about week in, week out: stuff we either don’t need or, worse, which threatens some of the basic aspects of everyday civilisation.

Original: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/21/big-tech-products-silicon-valley

#LINK: “Ignore the hype over big tech. Its products are mostly useless”

Tuesday, 15 May, 2018

LINK: “Why Local Government must share the driving to accelerate transformation benefits”

There is a huge opportunity for local authorities to share common digital service patterns for highly defined, commoditised services that are repeated across multiple organisations. For services like reporting missed bins, FOI requests and complaints for example, how fundamentally different should the user journeys for these services be between individual authorities? Or, put another way, at a time of such pressure on public finances, can we continue to justify the level of local variation in the design and delivery of these services that we continue to see across the country?

Original: https://methods.co.uk/blog/local-government-must-share-driving-accelerate-transformation-benefits/

#LINK: “Why Local Government must share the driving to accelerate transformation benefits”

Two pieces on low code

The low code debate seems to have really kicked off.

Matt Skinner off of FutureGov blogs a critical piece:

The low code platforms we’ve tried place a big emphasis on making the lives of developers simpler (or redundant). Unfortunately, we notice this is at the expense of user experience. Low code makes it harder to take a user-centred, design-led approach.

When creating, you have to follow the platforms’ chosen UI components and design out of a prescribed box. Once completed, you can then tweak to meet your users needs. As the platform uses its own functionality, you are also restricted by what’s been created so far. It’s a world of functionality first and user needs later, which never ever ends well.

Paul Brewer from Adur & Worthing blogged himself in response:

After careful consideration, we went for what I think was a good, pragmatic compromise. Our chosen open standards platform (this is a must), providing a “low code” development environment, has a fixed enterprise licence fee that means we can not only build unlimited apps for ourselves, but can build apps for any public sector body operating in our geography at no additional cost. Development time is much faster than it would otherwise be, and the skills required are significant, but lower than other development environments.

Worth reading both in full to help you decide if low code fits into your strategy.

#Two pieces on low code